Friday, February 25, 2005

Blogettes

Blogettes are a few smaller bits that aren't worthy of a full blog post but are important enough to probably save someone's life so it would be bad not to post it at all. Here's a few.

1. Hope for the future

The other day my fiancee and I took her young cousin out for his birthday. It was great for me, because 12 year old nerdy boys have just about the same interests as me. We went to comic shops, cool Japanese toy stores, ate hot dogs, the whole nine yards. And it was really frickin' great. He's not a superhero fan, but the boy loves him some Star Wars. He loves it with the joy and dedication that I did at his age, before age and an awareness of good writing took that joy away from me. The comic shop was a revelation to him. "How'd you know about this place?" he asked me. That's the thing right there. The kids, they don't know about the places. Get the word out. There are young nerdy boys and girls (and even a few closeted nerds) out there just aching to find the good stuff. The future isn't as bleak as some say, but we gotta bust our ass to make sure it stays that way.

2. Paul Pope is the Pontiff of Good Comics

After two decent-but-not-inspiring issues, Solo proves its worth with the Paul Pope outing. Holy crap, but that was a good comic. How do you do a good anthology book? Apparently, just let Paul Pope do the whole damn thing. Whereas the new Bizarro World book vacillated between greatness and snoozers, Pope's Solo issue just fired direct hit after direct hit. He injected the genre bits with good personal stuff and observation and the more personal stuff with a great storytelling sense and clever fun. Paul Pope is up there with Cooke, Morrison, Quitely, and Mignola as Guys That Get It. Great, great stuff. Get the damn book, kids. Best Dick Grayson I can remember.

3. What the hell is up with Ty Templeton's art?

I love Ty the Guy. I think he's one of the greatest underrated writers out there and his art is just as good. So when I saw he and Dan Slott were reuniting (after some great DC animated work) on a Spider-man/Human Torch book I thought "WHEEEEEEE" in my head. But something is amiss. I've said before that I think Slott is a decent writer over-praised due to lack of competition. But Templeton's art really looks wonky in this series so far. This issue had some more classic Ty stuff, but something just seems off. Is it the inker? The weird coloring? Something's not right.

4. Well said, Jinah

"Some times I just sit and think that comic books are just completely awesome! Then I remember that I've got you prescreening them and that there's probably a lot of crap out there."

Do a friend a favor. If you read a lot of books and they show the slightest interest, show them the great stuff. Not the good stuff. Not the fan-centric stuff. Even if you, for some odd reason, think JSA is readable nonjunk, do not give it to a new reader. Give them the We3s, the Acme Novelties, the Love and Rockets, the Hellboys. There's enough great stuff out there to blow peoples' minds. Just prescreen it.

5. Jesus, Cronin, enough with the Seven Soldiers stuff!

Yeah, it was fucking amazing and I want to cuddle with it in my bed and the Moebius stuff was gorgeous and I'll actually miss those pathetic heroes, but SHEESH! Take a breath or something!

6. Please let it be purposeful understatement

I wrote a graphic novel series calledTRANSMETROPOLITAN, the creationof whose protagonist was somewhatinfluenced by Thompson's writing,persona and life.-- Warren Ellis

Cool story about hope for the future. Templeton's art seemed odd to me in the first issue of Spidey/Torch, too (didn't get the second yet). I can't come up with anything other than that there's some Ditko influence in there.

I totally agree with #4. Last year, I found that one of my roommates had borrowed JLA/Avengers from my room because he was bored one night. He said he liked it even if he couldn't understand most of it and he said he might borrow some comics again. I had never known he was interested in comics besides watching Justice League in TV. If I had known, I would've given him ANYTHING else to start reading (that taught me to keep the uber-nerdy stuff hidden).

I told him to let me pick something out next time. So, the next time he asked, I gave him the Gotham Central trade plus the issues of that Joker storyline that came after Half-A-Life. That impressed the hell out of him. He didn't even care that Batman was barely in it. And he really liked the Joker story. His only exposure was from the Batman cartoon, so he had no idea what Joker could really be like.

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